Video Games Celebrate 40 Years

By Nick Clayton

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first video console going on sale. Anybody of a certain age can probably remember coming across one of the first video games which were variations on large squares of light bouncing round a T.V. screen.

Most people were probably not that impressed, seeing it as a gimmick rather than the foundation of a multi-billion dollar industry.

But, according to Gizmodo Australia, the inventor of the video games console, the German-born Ralph Baer, had originally suggested the idea of an interactive television game to his bosses at Loral Electronics way back in 1951. In what could be portrayed as technology’s equivalent of Decca turning down the Beatles, the company was not interested.

In 1966 he put together his ideas in a four page document which was the foundation of his invention of the games console.

Using a vacuum tube chassis and a Heathkit CG-62 TV Alignment Generator, Baer cobbled together something that could move lines and squares across the screen. It was a working prototype, and finally his bosses were impressed. Baer got the green light plus some money to whip his innovation into commercial shape…

Baer created seven consoles before landing on the switch-programmable version he boringly called the “Brown Box…”

Baer licensed the Brown Box to Magnavox in July 1971. During the year-long game testing, Magnavox referred to the unit as the “Skill-o-Vision,” before landing on “Odyssey” when it went to market in 1972. The system did well, selling 100,000 consoles in its first year, but it wasn’t quite a runaway success…

After seeing Baer’s ping pong game during an Odyssey demo in May of 1972, Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, came out with Pong later that year. The game first debuted as a coin-operated free-standing machine before making the transition to TV sets. Similarities certainly existed between the two, but Bushnell’s version was pared down with simpler controls and a ball that didn’t fly off the screen.

According to Gizmodo much of the income for Magnavox later came as the result of successful patent lawsuits. Today, the company name may have been largely forgotten, but Baer’s games console legacy certainly lives on.

Comments (1 of 1)

With all the press suggesting a rash of imitation and even theft inside the video game industry recently, one might conclude this to be a recent phenomenon. This article serves to add a wonderful perspective, the fact that this has been going on for 40 year - something that had probably escaped most reader's attention previously.

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